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In what the Mozilla Organization describes as "the first Beta release of our next generation Firefox browser", the company has released Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 (Deer Park). It is available for download here. New features include an automated update to streamline product upgrades, faster browser navigation, drag and drop reordering for browser tabs, improvements to popup blocking and a "Clear Private Data" function that can quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut.

Microcross is shipping an embedded Linux toolkit for a tiny single-board computer (SBC) module from Cogent. The Microcross GX-Linux Platform includes a MIPS-powered CSB655 SBC, along with a 2.6.11 Linux kernel, BSP, filesystem utilities, and tools. It targets industrial automation, telematics, medical applications, and set-top boxes.

The Mozilla Foundation has released a workaround for a critical buffer overflow vulnerability in the Firefox browser that was first made public early yesterday (see "Firefox flaw found: Remote exploit possible"). Mozilla developers yesterday posted a software patch and instructions for a workaround, both of which disable the buggy Firefox feature. Mozilla's patch and workaround can be found online at: http://www.mozilla.org/security/idn.html.

So, PalmOS ends up in the hands of an Japanese mobile browser company that almost no one has ever heard of. It's a sad sign that expectations for PalmOS software have been so low, for so long, that PalmSource stock leapt 70 per cent on the news. The origins of this decline have been well documented here at El Reg, we'll only recap the key mistakes before raising a spectre that haunts this tale of Silicon Valley history: a spectre called Apple.

A group that includes senior government officials from 13 countries has compiled a road map for creating national policies on open-technology standards.

In a report to be presented at the World Bank yesterday, a group that includes senior government officials from 13 countries will urge nations to adopt open-information technology standards as a vital step to accelerate economic growth, efficiency and innovation. The 33-page report is a road map for creating national policies on open-technology standards and comes at a time when several countries -- and some state governments -- are pursuing plans to reduce their dependence on proprietary software makers, notably Microsoft, by using more free, open-source software. The project, begun by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School, gathered government officials from China, India, Thailand, Denmark, Jordan, Brazil and elsewhere at a three-day meeting in Silicon Valley in February to discuss technology standards and economic development. The meeting was followed by e-mail exchanges, conference calls and postings on a shared Web site.

Last fall, between speculations about what the consequences of Chris Stone's departure from Novell would mean (the answer in retrospect: not much) the topic of the moment was a NetWare client for Linux. That is, client software that would allow a Linux desktop to access a NetWare server on an even footing with a Windows desktop.

With more than 15000 Linux machines on their internal network, a LaserJet development process that relies on Linux workstations, and plans to ship Ubuntu-based notebooks and desktops, Linux is becoming big business for HP.

DistroWatch reports - The Kubuntu project, a subproject of Ubuntu Linux, has announced a preview release of Kubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger: The Kubuntu 5.10 Preview is now available. This is the beta release for the next version of Kubuntu. New in this release is: the latest KDE 3.4.2, OpenOffice 2 beta 2, X.Org 6.8.2.

OSDir has some great screenshots of Kubuntu 5.10 Preview. Check it out.

Learn how to leverage an existing application to create your own office automation program. First up, a vocabulary and design lesson.

Plans for an Eclipse Application Lifecycle Framework (ALF) will open up new opportunities for open-source developers and systems integrators, executives said at EclipseWorld.

Open source is still up to five years away from mainstream use in enterprise IT infrastructures, despite the progress made in the commercialization of the platform, according to analyst Gartner.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds sent a reminder to theLinux Kernel Mailing List that the merge window for 2.6.14 is coming to and end. "As per the new merge policies that were discussed during LKS in Ottawa earlier during the summer," Linus explained, "I'm going to accept new stuff for 2.6.14 only during the first two weeks after 2.6.13 was released." The new development policy was first discussed on the lkml with the release of 2.6.13-rc4, and further elaborated with the release of 2.6.13.

Linux shows maturity on Gartner's famous Hype Cycle, but is still two to five years short of mainstream use.

A small Utah-based company has developed a portable Linux server that can be plugged into the USB (Universal Serial Bus) port of a Windows PCs

No one knows for sure who Pamela Jones is: where she's worked, where she lives, what she looks like or why she's so obsessed with a lawsuit by the SCO Group Inc. against IBM Corp. But that doesn't stop lawyers embroiled in the breach of contract and trade secret violations case from being mesmerized by her Web site, http://www.Groklaw.net.

Corporate lawyers can be grouchy when it comes to open-source. They claim opening the door to open-source software carries unacceptable legal risk plus many naively or wrongly think that proprietary software doesn't carry its own risks

Gartner has published ‘Hype Cycle for Linux 2005’ a report which illustrates how, over the past two years, Linux has matured as an established operating system environment, primarily on one-to four-processors. However, Gartner found that for eight processors and beyond, Linux must demonstrate performance, security and application proof points based on the 2.6 version of the kernel and that the biggest test continues to be whether it can function as a data centre server for mission-critical applications.

DistroWatch reports - Foresight Linux 0.9 is the first distribution release to ship with the brand new GNOME 2.12, released yesterday: "We are happy to announce the availability of Foresight Linux 0.9! Foresight takes another major step forward towards usability and functionality with the first release of the 0.9 series, and having the distinction of being the first distro to offer you GNOME 2.12!

OSDir has some nice shots of GNOME 2.12 Final running on Foresight Linux 0.9.

Among the confusion new Linux users often face is the variability among archived and compressed formats used by downloaded applications. "Should I use the tar.gz file, the zip file, or the tar.bz2 file?" they may wonder. Here's what you need to know about compression formats in order to easily install any application.

Linux server sales continued strong through the second quarter of 2005, according to a recent market research report.